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Sturdy Oak, The

<h2> CHAPTER III. BY FANNIE HURST </h2> Destiny, busybody that she is, has her thousand irons in her perpetual fires, turning, testing and wielding them. While Miss Betty Sheridan, for another scornful time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of the Sentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's, George Remington in his small mahogany office adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying, over and over again, the small planks of his platform, stuffing the knot holes which afforded peeps to the opposite side of the issue with anti-putty, and planning a bombardment of his pattest phrases for the complete capitulation of his Uncle Jaffry. While Genevieve Remington in her snug library, so eager in her wifeliness to clamber up to her husband's small planks, and if need be, spread her prettily flounced skirts over the rotting places, was memorizing, with more pride than understanding, extracts from the controversial article for quotation at the Woman's Club meeting, Mr. Penfield Evans, with a determination which considerably expanded his considerable chest measurement, ran two at a bound up the white stone steps of Mrs. Gallup's private boarding-house and pulled out the white china knob of a bell that gave no evidence of having sounded within, and left him uncertain to ring again. A cast-iron deer, with lichen growing along its antlers, stood poised for instant flight in Mrs. Gallup's front yard. While Mr. Evans waited he regarded its cast-iron flanks, but not seeingly. His rather the expression of one who stares into the future and smiles at what he sees. Erie Street, shaded by a double row of showy chestnuts, lay in summer calm. A garden hose with a patent attachment spun spray over an adjoining lawn and sent up a greeny smell. Out from under the striped awning of Hassebrock's Ice Cream Parlor, cat-a-corner, Percival Pauncefort Sheridan, in rubber-heeled canvas shoes and white trousers, cuffed high, emerged and turned down Huron Street, making frequent forays into a bulging rear pocket. Miss Lydia Chipley, vice-president of the Busy Bee Sewing and Civic Club, cool, starchy and unhatted, clicked past on slim, trim heels, all radiated by the reflection from a pink parasol, gay embroidery bag dangling. "Hello, Lyd!" "Hello, Pen!" "What's your hurry?" "It's my middle name." "Why hurry, when the future is always waiting?" "Why aren't you holding your partner's head since he committed political suicide in the Sentinel?" "I'd rather hold your head, Lyd, any day in the week." "Gaul," said Miss Chipley, passing on, her sharply etched little face glowing in the pink reflection of the parasol, "is bounded on the north by Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house, and on the south by——" "By the Frigid Zone!" Then the door from behind swung open. Mr. Penfield Evans stepped into Mrs. Gallup's cool, exclusive parlor of better days, and delivering his card to a moist-fingered maid, sat himself among the shrouded furniture to await Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith and Miss Emelene Brand. Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house was finishing its noonday meal. Boiled odors lay upon a parlor that was otherwise redolent of the more opulent days of the Gallups. A not too ostentatious clatter of dishes came through the closed folding-doors. Almost immediately Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith, her favorite Concentrated Breath of the Lily always in advance, rustled into the darkened parlor, her stride hitting vigorously into her black taffeta skirts. Even as she shook hands with Mr. Evans, she jerked the window shade to its height, so that her smoothness and coloring shone out above her weeds. In the shadow of her and at her life job of bringing up the rear, with a large Maltese cat padding beside her, entered Miss Brand on rubber heels. She was the color of long twilight. Mr. Evans rose to his six-feet-in-his-stockings and extended them each a hand, Miss Emelene drawing the left. Mrs. Smith threw up a dainty gesture, black lace ruffles falling back from arms all the whiter because of them. "Well, Penny Evans!" "None other, Mrs. Smith, than the villain himself." "Be seated, Penfield." "Thanks, Miss Emelene." They drew up in a triangle beside the window overlooking the cast-iron deer. The cat sprang up, curling in the crotch of Miss Emelene's arm. "Nice ittie kittie, say how-do to big Penny-field-Evans. Say how-do to big man. Say how-do, muvver's ittie kittie." Miss Emelene extended the somewhat reluctant Maltese paw, five hook-shaped claws slightly in evidence. "Say how-do to Hanna, Penfield. Hanna, say how-do to big man." "How-do, Hanna," said Mr. Evans, reddening slightly beneath his tan. Then hitched his chair closer. "To what," he began, flashing his white smile from one to the other of them, and with a strong veer to the facetious, "are we indebted for the honor of this visit? Are those the unspoken words, ladies?" "Nothing wrong at home, Penfield? Nobody ailing or—" "No, no, Miss Emelene, never better. As a matter of fact, it's a piece of political business that has prompted me to—" At that Mrs. Smith jangled her bracelets, leaning forward on her knees. "If it's got anything to do with your partner and my cousin George Remington having the courage to go in for the district attorneyship without the support of the vote-hunting, vote-eating women of this town, I'm here to tell you that I'm with him heart and soul. He can have my support and—" "Mine too. And if I've got anything to say my two nephews will vote for him; and I think I have, with my two heirs." "Ladies, it fills my heart with joy to—" "Votes! Why what would the powder-puffing, short-skirted, bridge-playing women of this town do with the vote if they had it? Wear it around their necks on a gold chain?" "Well spoken, Mrs. Smith, if—" "I know the direction you lean, Penfield Evans, letting—" "But, Miss Emelene, I—" "Letting that shameless Betty Sheridan, a girl that had as sweet and womanly a mother as Whitewater ever boasted, lead you around by the nose on her suffrage string. A girl with her raising and both of her grandmothers women that lived and died genteel, to go traipsing around in her low heels in men's offices and addressing hoi polloi from soap boxes! Why, between her and that female chauffeur, Mrs. Herrington, another woman whose mother was of too fine feelings even to join the Delsarte class, the women of this town are being influenced to making disgraceful—dis—oh, what shall I say, Alys?" Here Mrs. Smith broke in, thumping a soft fist into a soft palm. "It's the most pernicious movement, Mr. Evans, that has ever got hold of this community and we need a man like my cousin George Remington to—" "But, Mrs. Smith, that's just what I—" "To stamp it out! Stamp it out! It's eating into the homes of Whitewater, trying to make breadwinners out of the creatures God intended for the bread-eaters—I mean bread-bakers." "But, Mrs. Smith, I—" "Woman's place has been the home since home was a cave, and it will be the home so long as women will remember that womanliness is their greatest asset. As poor dear Mr. Smith was so fond of saying, he—I can't bring myself to talk of him, Mr. Evans, but—but as he used to say, I—I—" "Yes, yes, Mrs. Smith, I understa—" "But as my cousin says in his article, which in my mind should be spread broadcast, what higher mission for woman than—than—just what are his words, Emelene?" Miss Brand leaned forward, her gaze boring into space. "What higher mission," she quoted, as if talking in a chapel, "for woman than that she sit enthroned in the home, wielding her invisible but mighty scepter from that throne, while man, kissing the hand that so lovingly commands him, shall bear her gifts and do her bidding. That is the strongest vote in the world. That is the universal suffrage which chivalry grants to woman. The unpolled vote! Long may it reign!" Round spots of color had come out on Miss Emelene's long cheeks. "A man who can think like that has the true—the true—what shall I say, Alys?" "But, ladies, I protest that I'm not—" "Has the true chivalry of spirit, Emelene, that the women are too stark raving mad to appreciate. You can't come here, Mr. Evans, to two women to whom womanliness and love of home, thank God, are still uppermost and try to convert us to—" Here Mr. Evans executed a triple gyration, to the annoyance of Hanna, who withdrew from the gesture, and raised his voice to a shout that was not without a note of command. "Convert you! Why women alive, what I've been bursting a blood vessel trying to say during the length of this interview is that I'd as soon dip my soul in boiling oil as try to convert you away from the cause. My cause! Our cause!" "Why—" "I'm here to tell you that I'm with my partner head-over-heels on the plank he has taken." "But we thought—" "We thought you and Betty Sheridan—why, my cousin Genevieve Remington told me that—" "Yes, yes, Miss Emelene. But not even the wiles of a pretty woman can hold out indefinitely against Truth! A broad-minded man has got to keep the door of his mind open to conviction, or it decays of mildew. I confess that finally I am convinced that if there is one platform more than another upon which George Remington deserves his election it is on the brave and chivalrous principles he has so courageously come out with in the current Sentinel. Whatever may have been between Betty Sheridan and—" "Mr. Evans, you don't mean to tell me that you and Betty Sheridan have quarreled! Such a desirable match from every point of view, family and all! It goes to show what a rattle-pated bunch of women they are! Any really clever girl with an eye to her future, anti or pro, could shift her politics when it came to a question of matri—" "Mrs. Smith, there comes a time in every modern man's life when he's got to keep his politics and his pretty girls separate, or suffrage will get him if he don't watch out!" "Yes, and Mr. Evans, if what I hear is true, a good-looking woman can talk you out of your safety deposit key!" "That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Smith, and I'll prove it to you. Despite any wavering I may have exhibited, I now stand, as George puts it in his article, 'ready to conserve the threatened flower of womanhood by also endeavoring to conserve her unpolled vote!' If you women want prohibition, it is in your power to sway man's vote to prohibition. If you women want the moon, let man cast your proxy vote for it! In my mind, that is the true chivalry. To quote again, 'Woman is man's rarest heritage, his beautiful responsibility, and at all times his co-operation, support and protection are due her. His support and protection.'" Miss Emelene closed her eyes. The red had spread in her cheeks and she laid her head back against the chair, rocking softly and stroking the thick-napped cat. "The flower of womanhood," she repeated. "'His support and his protection.' If ever a man deserved high office because of high principles, it's my cousin George Remington! My cousin Genevieve Livingston Remington is the luckiest girl in the world, and not one of us Brands but what is willing to admit it. My two nephews, too, if their Aunt Emelene has anything to say, and I think she has—" "Why, there isn't a stone in the world I wouldn't turn to see that boy in office," Mrs. Smith interrupted. At that Mr. Evans rose. "You mean that, Mrs. Smith?" Miss Emelene rose with him, the cat pouring from her lap. "Of course she means it, Penfield. What self-respecting woman wouldn't!" Mr. Evans sat down again suddenly, Miss Emelene with him, and leaning violently forward, thrust his eager, sun-tanned face between the two women. "Well, then, ladies, here's your chance to prove it! That's what brings me today. As two of the self-respecting, idealistic and womanly women of this community, I have come to urge you both to—" "Oh, Mr. Evans!" "Penfield, you are the flatterer!" "To induce two such representative women as yourselves to help my partner to the election he so well deserves." "Us?" "It is in your power, ladies, to demonstrate to Whitewater that George Remington's chivalry is not only on paper, but in his soul." "But—how?" "By throwing yourselves upon his generosity and hospitality, at least during the campaign. You have it in your power, ladies, to strengthen the only uncertain plank upon which George Remington stands today." A clock ticked roundly into a silence tinged with eloquence. The Maltese leaped back into Miss Emelene's lap, purring there. "You mean, Penfield, for us to go visit George—er—er—" "Just that! Bag and baggage. As two relatives and two unattached women, it is your privilege, nay, your right." "But—" "He hasn't come out in words with it, but he has intimated that such an act from the representative antis of this town would more than anything strengthen his theories into facts. As unattached women, particularly as women of his own family, his support and protection, as he puts it, are due you, due you!" Mrs. Smith clasped her plentifully ringed fingers, and regarded him with her prominent eyes widening. "Why, I—unprotected widow that I am, Mr. Evans, am not the one to force myself even upon my cousin if—" "Nor I, Penfield. It would be a pleasant enough change, heaven knows, from the boarding-house. But you can ask your mother, Penfield, if there ever was a prouder girl in all Whitewater than Emmy Brand. I—" "But I tell you, ladies, the obligation is all on George's part. It's just as if you were polling votes for him. What is probably the oldest adage in the language, states that actions speak louder than words. Give him his chance to spread broadcast to your sex his protection, his support. That, ladies, is all I—we—ask." "But I—Genevieve—the housekeeping, Penfield. Genevieve isn't much on management when it comes to—" "Housekeeping! Why, I have it from your fair cousin herself, Miss Emelene, that her idea of their new little home is the Open House." "Yes, but—as Emelene says, Mr. Evans, it's an imposition to—" "Why do you think, Mrs. Smith, Martin Jaffry spends all his evenings up at Remingtons' since they're back from their honeymoon? Why, he was telling me only last night it's for the joy of seeing that new little niece of his lording it over her well-oiled little household, where a few extra dropping in makes not one whit of difference." At this remark, embedded like a diamond in a rock, a shade of faintest color swam across Mrs. Smith's face and she swung him her profile and twirled at her rings. "And where Genevieve Remington's husband's interests are involved, ladies, need I go further in emphasizing your welcome into that little home?" "Heaven knows it would be a change from the boarding-house, Alys. The lunches here are beginning to go right against me! That sago pudding today—and Gallup knowing how I hate starchy desserts!" "For the sake of the cause, Miss Emelene, too!" "Gallup would have to hold our rooms at half rate." "Of course, Mrs. Smith. I'll arrange all that." "I—I can't go over until evening, with three trunks to pack." "Just fine, Mrs. Smith. You'll be there just in time to greet George at dinner." Miss Emelene fell to stroking the cat, again curled like a sardelle in her lap. "Kitti-kitti-kitti—, does muvver's ittsie Hanna want to go on visit to Tousin George in fine new ittie house? To fine Tousin Georgie what give ittsie Hanna big saucer milk evvy day? Big fine George what like ladies and lady kitties!" "Emelene, it's out of the question to take Hanna. You know how George Remington hates cats! You remember at the Sunday School Bazaar when—" A grimness descended like a mask over Miss Brand's features. Her mouth thinned. "Very well, then. Without Hanna you can count me out, Penfield. If—" "No, no! Why nonsense, Miss Emelene! George doesn't—" "This cat has the feelings and sensibilities of a human being." "Why of course," cried Penfield Evans, reaching for his hat. "Just you bring Hanna right along, Miss Emelene. That's only a pet pose of George's when he wants to tease his relatives, Mrs. Smith. I remember from college—why I've seen George kiss a cat!" Miss Emelene huddled the object of controversy up in her chin, talking down into the warm gray fur. "Was 'em tryin' to 'buse muvver's ittsie bittsie kittsie? Muvver's ittsie bittsie kittsie!" They were in the front hall now, Mr. Evans tugging at the door. "I'll run around now and arrange to have your trunks called for at five. My congratulations and thanks, ladies, for helping the right man toward the right cause." "You're sure, Penfield, we'll be welcome?" "Welcome as the sun that shines!" "If I thought, Penfield, that Hanna wouldn't be welcome I wouldn't budge a step." "Of course she's welcome, Miss Emelene. Isn't she of the gentler sex? There'll be a cab around for you and Mrs. Smith and Hanna about five. So long, Mrs. Smith, and many thanks. Miss Emelene, Hanna." On the outer steps they stood for a moment in a dapple of sunshine and shadow from chestnut trees. "Good-by, Mr. Evans, until evening." "Good-by, Mrs. Smith." He paused on the walk, lifting his hat and flashing his smile a third time. "Good-by, Miss Emelene." From the steps Miss Brand executed a rotary motion with the left paw of the dangling Maltese. "Tell nice gentleman by-by. Tum now, Hanna, get washed and new ribbon to go by-by. Her go to big Cousin George and piddy Cousin Genevieve. By-by! By-by!" The door swung shut, enclosing them. Down the quiet, tree-shaped sidewalk, Mr. Penfield Evans strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and before her large frame mansion of a thousand angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Herrington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and modish, was in the act of stepping up and in. "Well, Pen Evans! 'Tis writ in the book our paths should cross." "Who more pleased than I?" "Which way are you bound?" "Jenkins' Transfer and Cab Service." "Jump in." "No sooner said than done." Mrs. Herrington threw her clutch and let out a cough of steam. They jerked and leaped forward. From the rear of the car an orange and black pennant—Votes for Women—stiffened out like a semaphore against the breeze. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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